I first started my foray into the world of PPC affiliate marketing a bit over a year ago when I lost $1,000 in just under a month. I then decided to try my hand at it again a couple months ago, and finished June $400 in the hole.

I kept at it, since I kept seeing improvements in my average ROI, and it seems to have paid off since I managed to finish July IN THE GREEN! I know the correct term is “Black” and not green, but it’s not easy been green, and my spreadsheet shows my profits in green 🙂

Let me tell you, it’s a most wonderful feeling seeing yourself progress. It’s a great challenge, and when you succeed you get a huge high. Here is my affiliate data for the month of July:

As you can see, I finished with a profit of $26.29. While this amount may seem ludicrous, especially considering that I had to spend $885.71 to make $912.00, the fact is that I finished with a profit.

My ROI finished with an average of 2.97%. Notice how there isn’t a negative sign in front anymore? 🙂

Here is the progress of my total average ROI, taken after the first week and then every few periods thereafter: -57.12%, -53.42%, -43.71%, -36.83%, -31.76%, -25.67%, -19.57%, -13.53%, and now +2.97%!

Soon, I will begin to put less emphasis on the ROI and more on the net figure. After all, you could have an ROI of 100% and spend $50 to make $100, or you could have an ROI of 50% and spend $500 to make $750. I’d rather make the $250 than $50.

If you take the data from the last 7 days, you’ll see that I actually profited $116.14 with an ROI of 62.32%. This would work out to an average of $16.59 per day, or $497 a month. If I created 19 more campaigns just like this one, that would turn out to be $10,000 a month profit.

Unfortunately, the past few days have shown very poor results, but hopefully things will pick up again soon. I also have a huge surprise that I’ll be unveiling within a few days so be sure to stay tuned for that.

I’m also in the top 5 for your Market Leverage contest. Doesn’t look like I’ll be catching “The Behemoth” to get the monitor but I’m working to stay on the leader board! (my ROI is on the “+” side for the contest as well.)

Thanks for posting your results. I am always wondering whether to jump in to the PPC game on a more permanent basis. My prior experiments were generally lossy to just about breakeven. I’ve always been an organic SEO type guy, so PPC has been something reserved for experiments to date.

It’s all about testing. I would say 80% of my traffic is free, and 20% PPC. PPC is a nice way to get very targetted traffic right away. Free traffic usually takes time to build up to, so when you start out in AM or IM, you need to use PPC (or paid banners) to get traffic right away.

[…] Tyler Cruz is in the green. Congrats goes to him as he is one of the few bloggers who showed his (brutally honest) loss of money in PPC before making a comeback. PPC isn’t as easy as some people make it seem, there IS money to be made however, chances are just against you when you start out! […]

[…] begin, I’d like to let readers know that I am not a super affiliate. In fact, I’m still struggling to learn the game. However, I have learned many important lessons from the plethora of mistakes I’ve […]

Is there by any chance I could have a copy or template of the spreadsheet you’re using to track your progress in the Affiliate Marketing Plunge? I think that will help me out a lot to actually see my own progress in AM.

[…] believe the last real update I gave when I was still actively working on my campaign was my Affiliate Marketing Plunge: I’M IN THE GREEN!! post. Basically since then, I haven’t touched my campaign, being preoccupied with other […]

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